Messages

31

Modern Video Games / Re: Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase 2.21.2024 thoughts?

« on: February 19, 2024, 07:09:04 pm »

Being a partner showcase, there's probably not gonna be too much that interests me here unless it's a complete out of nowhere surprise.    There's not even anything announced for Switch that I'm wanting that much this year.  Honestly the only thing I'd probably even want at the moment is just for them to finally put Twilight Princess HD on Switch lol Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll throw that in as a bonus.

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Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: February 19, 2024, 12:56:07 am »

What plot points make it justified? Sony movies are in their own lane from MCU and that's a good thing. I laugh at people using "it's like a movie from the early 2000's" as an insult, that's a good thing.

Eh, I'll just say that a movie about Spider-Women, who don't actually become Spider-Women within the movie, because this is functionally a very expensive pilot to a Spider-Woman cinematic universe that will never happen, would've driven me nuts had I actually seen this movie in theater lol Of everything I've seen and heard, that's the most egregious thing to me lol It reminds me of the Birds of Prey movie, where you have these DC hero's/anti-heroes, but are like...underwhelming prequel versions of the actual characters within a movie that probably should've just been a straight up Harley Quinn film.

Like why do a Madame Web movie, a character no one knows or cares about, and not just do a Spider-Woman movie?  Can Sony not do that either? Is Madame Web the only workaround they can do for this?  It's the movie Hulk problem, where Marvel isn't allowed to make solo Hulk movies anymore, so he can only show up in another characters movie.  Like we can't have a Planet Hulk movie, but we can have Thor: Ragnarok instead.

I'm 100% on board with Marvel movies that have zero connection to the MCU, those would be sick, but I don't want a Venom movie that isn't in a Spider-Man world, even if those ones are mostly okay.  I don't want a Morbius movie, or a Kraven movie, and especially not a Madame Web movie.  That's the callout to the 2000's era of super hero flicks, it's just reminding people of Daredevil, Elektra, Fantastic Four, and yes, Catwoman lol

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Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: February 18, 2024, 01:24:13 pm »

Madame Web is a much better movie than I thought it would be. The dog piling acting like this is the worst thing ever is just.. incorrect. It doesn't come close to being as bad as Catwoman (even though it uses a song that appears in Catwoman) and it's also better than Morbius and Let There Be Carnage. The scene with the Britney Spears song Toxic made me like this movie. The action was better than I thought it would be based off the trailer. Looking forward to Kraven!

I almost forgot to mention this movie features one scene of product placement for Mountain Dew Code Red. Right after the movie before going home I picked up a bottle. Whoever decided to put one of the most 2003 beverages ever in this movie set in 2003 deserves a raise. I loved that it wasn't just normal Mountain Dew.

With every plot point I've heard of this movie, the clips I've seen, the hate this movie is getting is absolutely not unjustified lol When Morbius is looking to be the better made film, that's a problem lol  That doesn't mean you can't enjoy or there isn't worse, but movies like this are definitely showing a continuing problematic pattern for Sony and I have no reason to expect Kraven to be any different.

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Off Topic / Re: What TV/Netflix show are you currently watching? (Megathread)

« on: February 16, 2024, 05:49:53 am »

Finally finished my rewatch of Hunter x Hunter (2021) and it still bums me out there isn't more.  It's understandable why, the mangaka has had what sounds like debilitating health issues, so the manga goes on hiatus alot and there isn't a lot of manga to adapt.  I do hope he's able to finish it someday though, as I think this is a great series.  I don't know how the anime compares to the manga, I glanced at the old late 90's anime attempt they did and it semeed like it started very differently, so a lot maybe has changed, but I like the story. 

It starts out very traditional shonen, training/test arcs, then a small tournament arc, but then the whole series drastically shifts once they get to Yorknew City (Goofy name lol) and the story gets way darker, more brutal, and that sets the tone for the rest of the show.  Greed Island kinda brings it back into a more standard Shonen formula, but still some intense aspects, and then it gets to the Chimera Ant arc, which is dragged out a tad, but has some fantastic story stuff.  Gon goes through a lot, but I think this arc does the most for Killua, who I think is the best character in the show.  He has the most depth of the main cast and sees the most personal growth.

I do recommend this series, it's a lot of episodes (Though not as much as something like One Piece or even Dragon Ball Z, and it's better paced than both), but it's a solid bit of Shonen anime and I'd say it's a top 3 favorite in terms of shonen series for sure.  At least we are getting a Hunter x Hunter game soon, I just hope it's a decent fighting game and not some bland arena fighter.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Xbox going third party

« on: February 15, 2024, 06:47:04 pm »

Another article is saying Grounded is the 4th one, which makes a lot of sense.  Also I seemed to have completely skipped over the talk that they are going to continue being hardware makers, so we'll see at least another generation of Xbox.  That to me feels like they'll be much more picky about what they bring to other systems, so probably no Gears, Forza, Halo, that sort of stuff.  Up in the air for other big and new titles.

All that matters right this second is Rare Replay though, put it on Switch, PS5, or PC you cowards! lol

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Modern Video Games / Re: Xbox going third party

« on: February 15, 2024, 03:37:31 pm »

So it's just four games and not Starfield or Indiana Jones which explains the leakers started to walk stuff back. Seems like they were all probably on the table at some point otherwise they could've said a week ago that Starfield and Indiana Jones aren't coming.

Phil won't confirm the four games but seems like it's Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Pentiment and something else.

Reading this: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2024/02/15/xbox-promise-bring-more-games-to-more-players/

they say live service games plural, Sea of Thieves is live service and so is.. Halo Infinite? Are there other live service Xbox games? Grounded?

Reading that, it sounds like they are doing the Playstation method of putting games on other platforms at least a year after release, so while Starfield and Indiana Jones might not show up right away, they could absolutely have the chance of showing up next year, maybe later.  Grounded isn't a live service game, but that would likely be a smart thing to bring to Playstation, but yeah, I think Halo Infinite is kinda their only other notable live service game that I can think of off the top of my head.  It's also depends on what they considered "live service" as that might not mean it has a Battle Pass and such, but just gets regular content updates too, so who knows.

Keeping it smaller and delayed like this with the games makes sense, they still want to sell Xbox consoles for now, so putting all of it right away wouldn't be smart, but it still seems very likely.  It's not like the Series X is selling super well for them.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

« on: February 14, 2024, 03:02:25 am »

9 - Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain (PC 2015) - BEAT - Finally done with my second playthrough of the game.  I don't think it holds up as well the second time through compared to what I thought of the experience from back in the day.  I forgot how the game just spoils what shows up in every main mission, that's such a bad idea.  The game being unfinished, missing the final third of its story, you definitely feel by the end of the second part, like I forgot how random and out of place the final mission for the game is and how badly its handled.  I feel like it hurts the big story moment that comes before.

It is interesting re-experiencing this game after having played Death Stranding, how a lot of that game is an extension of what he did with MGSV, the similar execution of an open world you go back and forth through, doing story and side missions.  That being said, where MGSV starts to get very tedious with its side missions, some obnoxious stuff with doing multiple side ops in a row without a convenient fast travel (The game desperately needed the ability to treat the chopper like a fast travel point within the map), I've replayed Death Stranding twice, later this year it'll be three times and I love doing all the side stuff, it's so much more enjoyable.

I still love a lot about the game, it's executed kind of clunky, I feel it would be similar even if the story was completed, but there's still a lot to like with the game and if you wanted to beat the whole game, it's a solid 100+ hours for full completion, so there's still a decent amount of content. 

With the MGS3 remake coming up, and Kojima having a new action espionage game in the works, I've been tempted to check out the MGS Master Collection, re-experience MGS2 and MGS3 and actually beat MGS1, only dabbled with it back in the day, so that might be the plan for this year.

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: February 13, 2024, 04:30:46 pm »

Tried to play Helldivers 2, but my PC was not liking it lol Got it to run okay, better than I was expecting, but kept getting crashes, which could've been a game thing or a PC thing, or both really, I know it has some issues, them having just fixed server problems, because their game was too successful, but oh well, refunded that.  I am looking to get a new PC, hopefully next month, so I might attempt it again down the road as it's a very satisfying game to play in the two missions I got to play.  Very chunky and bombastic action and all the Starship Troopers styled theming is pretty fun.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Foamstars (Splatoon/Overwatch like game) from Square Enix

« on: February 12, 2024, 06:56:56 pm »

I would be surprised if this game makes it the full year.  That it's free for PS+ users is nice, but it being a 30 dollar sale, probably means it's not going to see much growth.  There's a lot of other more interesting live service multiplayer games out there right now that it's competing with, free ones at that, and that's going to be problematic for it I'm sure.  I guess for purely Sony fans, it's "We have Splatoon at home" for Playstation, but that only draws so much attention.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Foamstars (Splatoon/Overwatch like game) from Square Enix

« on: February 06, 2024, 10:51:36 pm »

I'll probably grab it just because I can through PS+, but not sure if I'll play it, knockoff Splatoon wasn't something super exciting looking, but who knows.  Was abit miffed they used generative AI for some ingame images of some sort, so that's a negative as minor as that may be, but still.  We'll see, I'm not really lacking for stuff to play at the moment.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Xbox going third party

« on: February 06, 2024, 04:03:04 pm »

I was primarily speaking of the hardware market. Them pulling a Sega is not what I had envisioned.

Yeah I was thinking that they would do more of a "go till they crash" sort of deal too.  Not that I think they are gonna come out and say "We are done, we are pulling a Sega", but if stuff like Halo and what not come to other systems, they'll play it off more as "expanding their brand and audience" and then probably just keep things on track for the Series X until this generation is done.  They might not even get out of the console market afterwards entirely, they could instead move into a cloud based system at the most.  Not that I would be interested, but could be an option for them.

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Off Topic / Re: Music thread

« on: February 05, 2024, 06:30:06 pm »

Bit of a random topic to bring this thread back to life with, but I started delving into AFI's 90's output because I sorta realized that other than the All Hallows EP, I never got into the band, because when I got into that EP for being involved with Tony Hawk and then when they got more popular with their early 00's output with songs like Miss Murder, and it was more...emo and dropping the more punk vibe, I just had no interest in the band and otherwise never listened to anything else other than that single EP.

Finally started diving into their stuff and basically everything from their first album to The Art of Drowning is great, short of Very Proud of Ya (Production isn't as good as the album before and after for some reason and it doesn't work as well alongside everything else to me).  Kinda surprised I never tried to delve deeper honestly, especially with how much I was into punk in the late 90's/early 00's as a teen.

Anyone else had that? You got obsessed with something specific from a band, maybe a song or one album, and you just never realized they had a bunch of other great stuff till later on? I often have the thing where I'll get hooked on a single song or two, but the rest of the band's output does little for me and that's just how it stays, but never have I just been like "Oh, there's like 4 sick albums I just never got into for no real reason" lol

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Modern Video Games / Re: Xbox going third party

« on: February 05, 2024, 03:42:57 pm »

It's still all very rumory, so I wouldn't put much stock into it yet until something more solid shows up.

Granted, this is all rumor based so we probably won't see it on PS5 anyway.

It's really easy nowadays to track which rumors are legitimate. The Verge isn't going to publish a report this big without evidence. If you follow leaks you'd recognize that many big names in the scene that have been proven right time and time again are standing behind this.

The Verge report doesn't exactly take the hard stance that other people are with Indiana Jones in particular and Xbox could see the backlash and reverse course still but it's definitely being considered.

If people were putting their names behind rumors that are made up and always turn out to be false then people would just stop listening to them obviously.

Eh, The Verge isn't above the rumor mill, I can look up that they were dealing with Switch Pro rumor stuff a few years back, it's still not something you want to get all behind until there's serious info to support it, even if some bigger names are willing to go out there for it.  Like I could believe Indiana Jones, Starfield, and some other games would show up on other systems, but I'm less likely to believe Halo, Gears, Forza, specifically iconic Microsoft games, would show up on other hardware.  If they do that, I feel like that's the end of Microsoft in the console hardware market. 

*EDIT*
With Phil coming out to say this, to me, that puts more actual credence to the possibility of something like this happening lol

https://www.destructoid.com/xbox-head-promises-update-on-future-of-xbox-next-week-amid-exclusivity-rumors/

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: February 05, 2024, 01:52:52 am »

I remembered why I dumped 150 hours into Metal Gear Solid V back when it first came out, because it's just an addictive gameplay loop for me lol Figured with the recent talk of Kojima going back to the genre with an original game, and that I'm super in the mood for something Kojima related with Death Stranding 2 coming out next year, I thought I'd dive back into MGSV and I do just really like the game still.  It's not perfect, I think some of the UI stuff is clunky for a mouse/keyboard, but I just love the whole experience and it'll be interesting replaying it having some knowledge of what is happening beforehand, though I'm super forgetting a lot of it, which is also good.

One thing I did notice here, that I'm not sure if I noticed from back then or not, but it was definitely not the best idea to get Keifer Sutherland for the role of Snake.  Not that it was a bad idea, his voice is great for the character, but when you hire a big name celebrity, there's a much higher cost and a limited amount of time you can have him around compared to your standard voice actor, and what happens is that Snake doesn't talk a ton outside of the story.  In past games, you'd get a lot of dialogue with Snake outside of the story, but here, it seems like if its not story, he's not talking or interacting as much.  Makes him feel so passive in the story.  It was sorta the same thing with Norman Reedus in Death Stranding, but him not being talkative actually works in favor with his character and some of the world aspects, so it's a little more forgivable.  They supplement it with way more Miller and Ocelot dialogue, but more Snake would've been good.

Still looking forward to going through the game for a second time though.  I should be playing some newer stuff I have in my backlog, but I think I'm just gonna play through this until Final Fantasy 7 later this month lol

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Modern Video Games / Re: Xbox going third party

« on: February 04, 2024, 09:19:48 pm »

It's still all very rumory, so I wouldn't put much stock into it yet until something more solid shows up.  I personally think it would be nuts to see them put specifically mainline Xbox games onto Playstation, like Halo, Gears, that sort of stuff, but I think it makes more sense to bring something like Starfield, which probably hasn't had as good of sales numbers as they wanted, or something like Sea of Thieves which is an 8 year old game at this point.  It also makes sense to bring non-Microsoft branded stuff such as Indiana Jones over.  This might be a good way to make up for some losses they've taken by doing the buyouts and haven't earned back quick enough.

Not that I personally mind either way, console wars are pointless.  That being said, if this could lead to me being able to get Rare Replay on Switch (Switch 2), or PS5, I'm on board with that.  I just want to easily play the Banjo-Kazooie games without having to haul out my Xbox 360 from the closet lol